Cognitive Development: Vygotsky's Sociocultural Theory

What is the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)?

Vygotsky’s term for the distance between what a child can do independently and what they can achieve with the guidance and assistance of adults or more skilled peers

What is Scaffolding?

A process where an instructor/adult adjusts the level of support to fit the learner's needs, taking control of tasks beyond the child's current capability until they can do it alone.

Private Speech

Talking out loud to oneself to plan, guide, and monitor one's own behavior and solve tasks.

Inner Speech

Private speech that has been internalized into silent thought (typically develops between ages 3 and 7).

Learning Theory (B.F. Skinner)

Language is learned through environmental conditioning, reinforcement, and imitation (nurture)

Nativism (Noam Chomsky)

Humans have an inborn biological capacity for language, facilitated by a Language Acquisition Device (LAD) that programs the brain to extract grammatical rules (nature)